The Manhattan Project and World War II Oral History Project provides a close look at the research conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II. The interviewees, Emil Konopinski and Lawrence Langer, are both former physics professors at Indiana University who were heavily involved with the Manhattan Project.

Emil Konopinksi begins by speaking of his early education and how he came to Indiana University as a physics professor. He explains how the committee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory came to be, and reflects on some of the personalities working to build the atom and hydrogen bombs. Dr. Konopinski reveals his major contributions to the project, such as the development of the first hydrogen bomb and his grasp of scientific theory. He reflects on how the war has changed physics and comments on the nuclear arms race. Other subjects include: Atomic Energy Commission, Hans Bethe, Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Serber, and Edward Teller.